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Some days, you can’t handle Great TV. Some days, your brain is tired, you spent the entire day trading passive aggressive emails with those dum dums in sales, and all you want at the end of the day is to sink down into the butt-shaped dent you have made in your couch (come on, that can’t just be me) and be transported onto a light, fluffy cloud where the stakes are low and the laughs are medium-sized.

If you’re having one of those days, have I got the show for you — Powerless, on NBC. It has a fun, marshmallowy premise: in Charm City, superheroes and supervillains are constantly duking it out, resulting in plenty of collateral damage and annoyance for the ordinary citizens just trying to live their lives. Vanessa Hudgens plays a new director of R&D at Wayne Enterprises, which invents products that help protect normal people from the destruction the super-folks leave in their wake.

It’s like the sorbet of TV. It’s light, sweet and a little zingy, and you don’t have to feel bad afterwards about binging.

Oh, and did I mention that the terrific cast includes Danny Pudi, Christina Kirk, Ron Funches, and Alan Tudyk (if you don’t recognize him, then you need to go binge Suburgatory immediately).

Boy, it is terrible weather for going outside today– which means it’s perfect weather for snuggling under a blanket and mainlining Netflix. What’s that you say? You’ve already burned through Son of Zorn and Speechless? You need something new to watch? You’re addicted to network TV now?

I got you, boo. This week’s recommendation is….

Wait for it….

iZOMBIEEEEEEEEEEE (and the crowd goes wild!).

iZombie is a CW show (you *know* how much I love the CW!) about Liv Moore, a doctor who gets changed into a zombie at a boat party in Seattle. When she eats brains, she has flashbacks from the life of the person whose brain she just snacked on. There’s a mystery-of-the-week element as well as a multi-season zombie conspiracy arc that involves, among other things, an energy drink called Max Rager. Amongst the many reasons you should spend your weekend with iZombie:

It’s a dramedy. Who doesn’t love dramedies?

It’s streaming on Netflix.

The third season is premiering April 4th, so there’s fresh content to look forward to.

Rob Thomas created it. As in, the dude who created Veronica Mars.

It’s zombies but it’s funny.

Max Rager. Ha!

You get to stare at this guy a lot:

7. And this guy:

Yes, it can be gross at times. And yes, the mysteries of the week aren’t always so compelling. But the larger arcs are fantastic, the acting is good, and if you liked V Mars, then you should have reached for your remote like three paragraphs ago.

Hey y’all, anyone else up for spending the weekend indoors binging on television? You cold-weather people know what I’m talking about. West coasters, you know you want to hide from the sunshine like an antisocial vampire (DAMMIT THAT SPARKLING GETS ANNOYING!)

Fortunately for you, you are now fully educated about/on board with the idea that network TV can be rad. You’ve stayed up until four in the morning, mainlining chocolate syrup and getting caught up on Son of Zorn, and

you

loved

it.

Thank goodness you have me to recommend a new comedy, because I’m telling you right now to go indoors and flip on your boob tube to watch Speechless. ABC description as follows:

Maya DiMeo (Minnie Driver) is a mom on a mission who will do anything for her husband Jimmy, her kids Ray, Dylan, and JJ, her eldest son with cerebral palsy. As Maya fights injustices both real and imagined, the family works to make a new home for themselves, and searches for just the right person to give JJ his “voice.”

The writing’s on point, the jokes are sharp, the show has a warm but snappy voice, and the entire cast knocks it out of the park. Plus there’s a goofily hot TV dad! (a modern archetype which I’ll be discussing in depth in a future post– stay tuned). The premise is heavy but the show is the opposite of a bummer– I promise. I haven’t led you astray before and I won’t do it now. Watch Speechless and let me know what you think!

Yeah yeah, we all know about Mad Men, Broad City, Game of Thrones…. we all know the list of cool-person-approved shows. I agree with you that the first season of Mr. Robot is really something. Breaking Bad is unprecedented TV, I know I know. But I have noticed that premium cable has the tendency to leave me feeling kind of… bummed? disturbed? depressed? The whole purpose of these types of shows is to test the limits, throw you off, keep you off kilter. Right now the name of the game is discomfort… and sometimes I’m just not up for that…. Which is why I’m going to make my pitch for the warm embrace of network TV (in this instance, specifically, comedies).